WAR FEVER.
Park Lane.
Dearest Daphne,—Juno ffarrington's wedding to the Oldcastles' boy, Portcullis, the other day, quite the best done of Allotment Weddings that are having a little vogue just now. Juno's white satin gown was embroidered with mustard and cress and spring onions in their natural colours, her veil was kept in place by a coronal of lettuce leaves, and, instead of a Prayer-Book or a posy, she carried a little ivory-and-silver spade. The effect was absolutely! The 'maids had on Olga's latest in Allotment Wedding frocks, carried out in potato-brown charmeuse and cabbage-green chiffon; also they'd garden-hats, tied under the chin with ribbon-grass and with a big cluster of radishes at the left side, and each of them carried a bunch of small salad and a darling little crystal-and-silver watering-pot (Portcullis's gifts). The Duke of Southlands gave his daughter away, and Juno insisted on his wearing a smock-frock and carrying a trowel, and just as the dear Bishop said, "Who giveth this woman?" the poor old darling dropped his trowel with a crash and rather spoilt things.
The wedding-cake was a great big war loaf stuck with flags. Juno cut it in old-fashioned style with Portcullis's sword. While we were doing ourselves well with war-bread and margarine, boiled eggs and plenty of champagne, the Controller of Wedding Breakfasts blew in (it's a new post, and he's two hundred and fifty able-bodied young assistants). He was curious to see what we were having, and cautioned us against throwing any rice after our bride and 'groom. "But how absurd, you ricky person!" chipped in Popsy, Lady Ramsgate, who, of course, is Juno's great-aunt. "We never throw rice at our wedding-people! That's only done by the outlying tribes of barbarians." It was a pity she attracted his notice, for he was down on her directly for having on a toque almost entirely made of young turnips and carrots. He said it was "an infraction of rule 150, cap. 4,500 of the Safety of the Empire Act, forbidding the use of the people's food for personal adornment."
The Allotment expression, which is the correct one now, is a look of interest and expectation, because what one's planted is coming up. Some people rather spoil their Allotment expression by a puzzled look. Et pourquoi? dear, they've quite forgotten what they planted, and, though they pretend they know exactly what it is that's coming up, they really haven't the slightest!
My last photo is considered to show the Allotment expression in utter perfection. (It's been in People of Position, Mayfair Murmurs, and several other weeklies.) I'm standing in my potato-patch (my Allotment toilette is finished off by a pair of enthralling little hob-nailed boots!) and I'm holding a rake and a hoe and a digging-fork in one hand and a garden-hose in the other; there's a wheel-barrow beside me, and I'm looking at the potato-plants with the true Allotment smile, my dearest. I sent a copy of this picky to Norty, and under it I wrote those famous last words of some celebrated Frenchman (I forget whether it was Molière or Mirabeau or Napoleon): "Je vais chercher un grand peut-être!"
THE LAST STRAW.
Wee-Wee is frightfully worried about Bo-Bo being so overworked. He used to be at the head of the Department for Telling People What to Do, and he and his five hundred assistants were worked half dead; and now he's at the head of a still newer department, the one for Telling People What They're Not to Do, and, though he's eight hundred clerks to help him, Wee-Wee says the strain is too great for words. He goes to Whitehall at ten every day and comes back at three! And then he has the Long-Ago treatment that's being used so much now for war-frayed nerves. The idea is to get people as far away from the present as poss. So when Bo-Bo comes in from Whitehall he lies down on a fearful old worm-eaten oak settle in a dim room hung with moth-eaten tapestry, and Wee-Wee reads Chaucer to him, and sings ghastly little folk-songs, accompanying herself on a thing called a crwth—(it's a tremendously primitive sort of harp, but I can't believe that even a crwth meant to make such a horrible noise as Wee-Wee makes on it!). Myself, I don't consider Bo-Bo a bit the better for the Long-Ago treatment, and there's certainly a wild look in his eyes that wasn't there before!
M'amie, would you like to hear the simply odious storyette of Somebody's Cousin? Well, so you shall. Somebody is by way of being an intimate foe of mine, and Somebody's Cousin has long been a thorn in the flesh and a shaking of the head to his people. Before the War he belonged to the League for Taking Everything Lying Down, the Fellowship for Preventing People from Standing up against Foreign Aggression, and the Brotherhood for Giving up All Our Advantages to Aliens. He was of military age, and when war came, after giving vent to some completely detestable sentiments, he crossed to the U.S. and naturalised himself there, constantly attacking the country that was unlucky enough to produce him.
When the U.S. came in, he shed his citizenship in a hurry, fled to South America, and naturalised himself in a republic that had sworn by all its gods to keep out of the War à tout prix. This republic, however, changed its mind later and followed its big northern brother into the War, et voilà! Somebody's Cousin was at a loose end again. He afterwards naturalised himself in half-a-dozen small far-away nations that all finally came in, and then, chérie, he drifted down to the islands of the South Pacific (the favourite ocean of his sort!) and had himself made an Ollyoola. (The Ollyoolas are a tribe that has never in all its past history been known to go to war). He was made an Ollyoola with all the native rites, dancing and shrieking and so on, and he wore the correct Ollyoola dress (a few shells and his hair trained on sticks to stand straight up).
And now comes the point of this storyette: Only a few weeks after Somebody's Cousin had become a full-blooded Ollyoola (I think that's the proper phrase), the Ollyoolas suddenly fell out with the Patti-Tattis (on the next island) and went to war, for absolutely the first time, with a ferocity, my Daphne, that seems to have been saving up through all their centuries of peacefulness!
Nothing's been heard since of Somebody's Cousin!
Ever thine,
Blanche.
Recruit. "Excuse me, Sir, I feel greatly exhausted by this exercise."
Instructor. "Do you, dearie? What would you like to play at? Kiss-in-the-ring?"
"AIRMEN'S ORDEAL IN THE NORTH SEA.
FIVE DAYS ON A PIECE OF CHOCOLATE."
Continental Daily Mail.
Rather a precarious perch.